FOUR VERSIONS OF THE MYTH OF P'AN KU
From the third to the sixth century A.D., particularly in southern China, a popular creation myth centered around the immense generative power and fertility of the god P'an Ku. While it is claimed in the first of four versions of this myth that P'an Ku arose out of "nothing," that void was indeed a rich one. Given its fecundity, one presumes it was conceived as an indistinct mass–as Chaos or "no-thing," the potentiality of all matter–rather than as the absence or negation of matter. Creation proceeds by the development of increasingly distinct forms out of this original Chaos: first "something" evolves from the'no-thing"; within something, the fundamental creative powers, male and female, are delineated; and finally the creator god P'an Ku is born, a child of Chaos. A variation of this myth envisages an equally close bond between P'an Ku and Chaos. In this instance, the beginning is depicted as a cosmic egg–a principle of fertility, or wholeness and duality–from which the creator springs forth. As the substance of the egg, Chaos is again the essential basis of creation, here forming the raw material in which the embryonic P'an Ku develops and the stuff from which he makes the basic things of the universe. The two variant endings of the myth show P'an Ku creating the world by self sacrifice. In the first, his skull, like the top of the eggshell, becomes the dome of the sky, and his body becomes the elements of the earth. The vermin on his body are transformed into humans who are thus still nourished by his being. (In the second, more local variant, P'an Ku's body forms the five sacred mountains of China.) The identity of the world with the sacrificed body of a god is a powerful concept. Through it, of course, the sacrality of the world is established, but there is an implicit notion of tremendous sacrifice and loss, the irrevocable end of the golden age when the creator god existed.
(from Maria Leach, The Beginning [New York, Funk and Wagnalls: 1956], pp. 224-26.)
I. AT FIRST there was nothing. Time passed and nothing became something. Time passed and something split in two: the two were male and female. These two produced two more, and these two produced P'an Ku, the first being, the Great Man, the Creator.
II. FIRST there was the great cosmic egg. Inside the egg was Chaos, and floating in Chaos was P'an Ku, the Undeveloped, the divine Embryo. And P'an Ku burst out of the egg, four times larger than any man today, with an adze in his hand (or a hammer and chisel) with which he fashioned the world. Two great horns grew out of his head (the horned head is always the symbol of supernatural power in China); two long tusks grew from his upper jaw, and he was covered with hair.
P'an Ku went to work at once, mightily, to put the world in order. He chiseled the land and sky apart. He piled up the mountains on the earth and dug the valleys deep, and made courses for the rivers.
High above ride the sun and moon and stars in the sky where P'an Ku placed them; below roll the four seas. He taught mankind to build boats and showed him how to throw bridges over rivers, and he told them the secrets of the precious stones.
III. THE WORLD was never finished until P'an Ku died. Only his death could perfect the universe: from his skull was shaped the dome of the sky, and from his flesh was formed the soil of the fields; from his bones came the rocks, from his blood the rivers and seas; from his hair came all vegetation. His breath was the wind; his voice made thunder; his right eye became the moon, his left eye, the sun. From his saliva or sweat came rain. And from the vermin which covered his body came forth mankind.
IV. WHEN P'AN KU wept his tears became the Yellow River, and V when he died his body formed the five sacred mountains of China. T'ai Mountain, in the east, rose from his head; Sung Mountain, in the center, from his body; Heng Mountain of the north rose from his right arm, Heng Mountain of the south from his left; Hua Mountain in the west grew out of his feet.
It is said that P'an Ku's image can still be seen in a cave cherished by the Miao tribe in the Mountains of Kuangsi, and that along with the image of P'an Ku stand also images of the three great sovereigns who followed him: the Lord of Heaven, the Lord of Earth, and the Lord of Man.